onsdag 4 januari 2017

Update of realQM and The Trouble of Quantum Mechanics

I have made an update of realQM as start for the New Year! More updates will follow...

The update contains more computational results (and citations) and includes corrections of some misprints.

The recent book by Bricmont Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics reviews the confusion concerning the meaning of quantum mechanics, which is still after 100 years deeply troubling the prime achievement of modern physics. As only salvation Bricmont brings out the pilot-wave of Bohm from the wardrobe of dismissed theories, seemingly forgetting that it once was put there for good reasons. The net result of the book is thus that quantum mechanics in its present shape does not make sense...which gives me motivation to pursue realQM...and maybe someone else sharing the understanding that science must make sense...see earlier post on Bricmont's book ...

Yes, the trouble of making sense of quantum mechanics is of concern to physicists today, as expressed in the article The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics in the January 2017 issue of The New York Review of Books by Steven Weinberg, sending the following message to the world of science ultimately based on quantum mechanics:

The development of quantum mechanics in the first decades of the twentieth century came as a shock to many physicists. Today, despite the great successes of quantum mechanics, arguments continue about its meaning, and its future.

I’m not as sure as I once was about the future of quantum mechanics. It is a bad sign that those physicists today who are most comfortable with quantum mechanics do not agree with one another about what it all means.

What then must be done about the shortcomings of quantum mechanics? One reasonable response is contained in the legendary advice to inquiring students: “Shut up and calculate!” There is no argument about how to use quantum mechanics, only how to describe what it means, so perhaps the problem is merely one of words.

On the other hand, the problems of understanding measurement in the present form of quantum mechanics may be warning us that the theory needs modification.

The goal in inventing a new theory is to make this happen not by giving measurement any special status in the laws of physics, but as part of what in the post-quantum theory would be the ordinary processes of physics.

Unfortunately, these ideas about modifications of quantum mechanics are not only speculative but also vague, and we have no idea how big we should expect the corrections to quantum mechanics to be. Regarding not only this issue, but more generally the future of quantum mechanics, I have to echo Viola in Twelfth Night: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I.”

Weinberg thus gives little hope that fixing the trouble with quantum mechanics will be possible by human intervention, and so the very origin of the trouble, the multi-dimensional linear Schrödinger equation invented by Schrödinger, must be questioned and then questioned seriously (as was done by Schrödinger propelling him away from the paradigm of quantum mechanics), and not as now simply be accepted as a God-given fact beyond question. This is the starting point of realQM.

This conference celebrates this magnificent journey that started 90 years ago. Quantum physics mechanics has during this period developed in leaps and bounds and this conference will be devoted to the progress of quantum mechanics since then. It aims to show how universal quantum mechanics is penetrating all of basic physics. Another aim of the conference is to highlight how quantum mechanics is at the heart of most modern science applications and technology. ago

Note the "leaps and bounds" which may be the troubles Weinberg is referring to...